WORK — ROSS GAY

Contents:

• POEMS / GAY POEMS - THE BT POETRY ON THE WEBNEWTSOBSHAGS   FOLLOWON AUG 25 2023 08:30 AM PST  THE GLOSSY STUGGLE OF A ONCE YOUNG GAY MAN
• ROSS GAY
• PLEASE RETURN THE WORD GAY
• GAY

POEMS / GAY POEMS - THE BT POETRY ON THE WEBNEWTSOBSHAGS   FOLLOWON AUG 25 2023 08:30 AM PST  THE GLOSSY STUGGLE OF A ONCE YOUNG GAY MAN

That was the qutn we posed to six wrers — the sayist and novelist Roxane Gay, the playwright and tor Jam Ijam, the playwright and actor Lisa Kron, the journalist and TV wrer Thomas Page McBee, the novelist Neel Mherjee and the fictn and nonfictn wrer Edmund Whe — who gathered over Zoom early May for the latt stallment of our T 25 list. ImageThe T edor at large and the nversatn’s morator, Kurt Soller, bottom right, wh the panelists, clockwise om top left: Edmund Whe, Thomas Page McBee, Jam Ijam, Lisa Kron, Roxane Gay and Neel was ltle agreement beyond all that — no surprise for a group of six spired queers — and the shared sire to create a list that was ls whe, ls male, ls cis than those that’ve e before. The book’s narrator, Js Goldberg, who nfounds her parents as a “child who uldn’t be taloged by Sears, ” ns away om home as a teenager, then fds refuge the gay bars of Buffalo.

ROSS GAY

— Co RomackImageButch women and lbians midcentury Ameri, cludg, clockwise om left, “The Butch Stance” (cir 1960s) om the Lbian Herstory Archiv; a butch-femme uple San Francis durg the 1950s, photographed at one of the pneer Mona Sargent’s clubs; and the activists Del Mart (left) and Phyllis Lyon (cir 1950s) — who, 2004, had the first same-sex weddg San om left: Lbian Herstory Archiv; Wi Open Town History Project (#2003-05), urty of the GLBT Historil Society; Phyllis Lyon and Del Mart Papers (#1993-13), urty of the GLBT Historil Society Roxane Gay: I read “Stone Butch Blu” when I was 17, and was the first time I saw anythg remblg butch inty. Today, n still mean that, but ’s also a tchall term for the entire Mherjee: I feel a b of regret and some grief that the words “gay" and “lbian” have fallen off the map, although “queer” is more expansive.

Gay: I don’t thk you n overlook nonfictn talkg about queer lerature. You know, what they ll tofictn … Certaly, all the great gay French wrers, like [Marcel] Prot and André Gi, they all were wrg tobgraphil fictn of some sort.

PLEASE RETURN THE WORD GAY

” Once, on a bate stage, I was talkg about [Ernt] Hemgway’s [1927] story “Hills Like Whe Elephants, ” and I was sayg that a heterosexual wrer uld assume that the rear had the same valu as he did, and so he uld e directns — ’s about abortn, yet Hemgway never that word — but that a gay wrer like Prot had such unual ias that he had to spell them out for the general This brgs up the tertg ia of who wrers are wrg for. Like s gay narrator, who reunts his erant journeys a blend of first and third person — almost as though he were a stranger to himself — Galgut’s book rists easy tegorizatn but is fed, above all, by Damon’s abily to nnect wh others. There are entirely different perds: Before Stonewall [ 1969], queer wrers were wrg for a straight dience; after, we began to dare to wre directly to gay rears.

Culture wh : In terms of the non, we thk about very whe cis gay men primarily.

GAY

Roxane, you had mentned somethg siar at the begng …Gay: Often when we’re talkg about lerature, people treat wh a pal “L”: It has to be ponro.